Response to Videos

For me, the video that connected most to what we have been learning in class, and what I have been experiencing while tutoring was the video entitled Teaching After Brown V Board of Education, Larson-Billings, Lomax, Orefield. What was easiest for me to connect to primarily was the issue of unintentional segregation. In the school I am tutoring in, the segregation is highly evident. The poor neighborhood the school is located in provides for economic segregation, as well as racial, language and religious segregation. At least 90% of the students I work with as of non-white racial background, and due to the fact that the school is located right next to the projects, most of the students also come from impoverished backgrounds. The school has little resources, is located in an old, run down building in a dirty and poor neighborhood. Even though there is no law segregating the students in this school from students in other, mostly white richer public schools, the geographic map of school districts makes segregation inevitable for inner city schools such as the ones we all work in in Providence. 

Another part of the video that really stuck out to me were some of the statistics that were used. Some of them include:
- the average black family has 1/19 the wealth of the average white family
- the average Latino family has 1/13 the wealth of the average white family
- the top 400 universities have almost all white and Asian students, while the 3,200 lower tier universities have mostly black and Latino students
- California has one of the highest problems with unintentional segregation.
The last point that really spoke to me was the point Gloria Larson-Billings stated while Common Core and teacher evaluations was being talked about. She said that while both of these things are important, these issues should not even be on the forefront of education until the issues of segregation and equal funded are finally solved. 50 years ago, Brown V Board of Ed set the laws in place, however, there is still legislature that needs to be put in place to solve these issues that are still very much ongoing. Larson-Billings is right; we need to prioritize the issues of education. Those that began half a century ago and are based on human rights should be fixed before we work on new issues dealing with testing and evaluations.
The Census of 2010 supports the video in that segregation in public schools is still ongoing. The article includes more statistics and offers possible solutions. http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/nation/census/2010-12-14-segregation_N.htm